Just so you'll know, the national debt clock "widget" on this site is INACCURATE. I'll figure out how to fix or get rid of it later but just so you know, we're at over $15.6 Trillion ($49,798 per citizen).

That's in addition to $15.96 Trillion we have in collective personal debt in this country ($50,950 per citizen).

Once in his shop a workman wroughtWith languid hand, and listless thought,When through the open window's spaceBehold! - a Camel thrust his face."My nose is cold," he meekly cried,"Oh, let me warm it by thy side."

Since no denial word was said,In came the nose, - in came the head,-As sure as sermon follows textThe long, excursive neck came next,And then, as falls the threatening stormIn leap'd the whole ungainly form.

So, folks, what would you think about a "TOTAL SHORTFALL" of $99 Trillion -- in addition to our $15.6 Trillion National Debt?

A Lebanese-born man who shot at young Chasidic Jewish children on a bus on the Brooklyn Bridge in March 1995, killing a 16-year-old boy and seriously wounding several others, has admitted that his aim was “to kill Jews”.

He previously refused to give a reason.

He is already serving a prison sentence of over 100 years for murder, so the new information will not be used to pursue a further hate crime charge, prosecutors say.

Iran executed one citizen per day in 2011, according to a report published yesterday by Amnesty International.

Among the “crimes” punishable by death in Iran are adultery and homosexuality.

Officially, Tehran executed 360 people last year but Amnesty said that this does not “account for the probable extent of Iran’s use of the death penalty – Amnesty International has had credible reports of substantial numbers of executions not officially acknowledged.”

Amnesty says the real number of executions in Iran were at least double the government figure. Several were juveniles. In numerous cases executions were carried out based on “confessions” extracted from suspects after torture, according to Amnesty.

It is interesting that when Amnesty International releases reports on Israel, the BBC, the world’s biggest broadcasting network, and other Western broadcasters, almost always highlight them -- in the BBC’s case often as their lead world news story. But Amnesty’s reports on Iran and other countries hardly seem to be given the same prominence by the BBC and others.

While you're still with Tom Gross, see this bit of Hot Spit at the same link:

CLASS ACTION SUIT FILED AGAINST JIMMY CARTER FOR DELIBERATE MISREPRESENTATIONS IN ANTI-ISRAEL BOOK

Claiming that “Perhaps no individual more than former American President Jimmy Carter has sought every possible opportunity to defame the Jewish State and endeavored to challenge its right to exist,” a class action suit has been filed in the U.S. against the former president and the Simon & Schuster publishing company alleging that “Carter’s book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, contained numerous false and knowingly misleading statements intended to promote the author’s agenda of anti-Israel propaganda and to deceive the reading public instead of presenting accurate information as advertised.”

The suit, captioned Unterberg et al. v. Jimmy Carter et.al (11 cv 0720), filed in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, seeks compensatory and punitive damages against the defendants....

.... This is the first known suit against a former President and a publishing house for violating consumer protection laws by knowingly publishing inaccurate information while promoting a book as factual.

I had hoped that Rev.Jeremiah Wright's Global March to Jerusalem for the Arab-Muslim Anti-Israel "Land Day" would pass without too much commotion and then be pushed out of the news cycle by other events. I should have known better; every time I make an attempt at optimism, it just doesn't pan out.

One Arab aggressor has already been shot dead by the IDF, so it's going to be a media avalanche.

We pray for peace ~ Shabbat Shalom - in Eretz Yisrael, and for the safety of our brothers and sisters, uncles and aunts, children and grandparents.

And we pray for Tzahal.

He Who blessed our forefathers Abraham, Isaac and Jacob -- may He bless the fighters of the Israel Defense Forces, who stand guard over our land and the cities of our God, from the border of the Lebanon to the desert of Egypt, and from the Great Sea unto the approach of the Aravah, on the land, in the air, and on the sea.

May the Almighty cause the enemies who rise up against us to be struck down before them. May the Holy One, Blessed is He, preserve and rescue our fighters from every trouble and distress and from every plague and illness, and may He send blessing and success in their every endeavor.

May He lead our enemies under our soldiers’ sway and may He grant them salvation and crown them with victory. And may there be fulfilled for them the verse: For it is the Lord your God, Who goes with you to battle your enemies for you to save you.

I won't soon forget the observation by Peggy Noonan back in 2009 that Pres. Obama needed to bring into focus his sentence.

.... I think at bottom his problems come down to this: The Sentence. And the rough sense people have that he’s not seeing to it.

The Sentence comes from a story Clare Boothe Luce told about a conversation she had in 1962 in the White House with her old friend John F. Kennedy. She told him, she said, that “a great man is one sentence.” His leadership can be so well summed up in a single sentence that you don’t have to hear his name to know who’s being talked about. “He preserved the union and freed the slaves,” or, “He lifted us out of a great depression and helped to win a World War.” You didn’t have to be told “Lincoln” or “FDR.”

She wondered what Kennedy’s sentence would be. She was telling him to concentrate, to know the great themes and demands of his time and focus on them. It was good advice....

.... New White Houses are always ardent for change, for breakthroughs. They want the sentence even when they don’t know the sentence exists, even when they think it’s a paragraph. The Obama people want, “He was the president who gave all Americans health care,” and, “He lessened income inequality,” and, “He took over a failed company,” and other things. They wants a jumble of sentences and do a jumble of things. But an administration about everything is an administration about nothing.

Mr. Obama is not seeing his sentence. He’s missing it. This is the sentence history has given him:

“He brought America back from economic collapse and kept us strong and secure in the age of terror.”

That’s all anybody wants. It’s all that’s needed.

Since none of that has worked out - and indeed our economy continues to collapse and we are weaker and less secure in the world than ever - the problem of The Sentence becomes even more urgent, especially given that this is no longer a "New White House," but one entering its final months.

"This is my last election," Obama said. "After my election, I have more flexibility."

.... Note Obama's use of the first-person adjective. Most American politicians speak of "the" election. Obama calls it "my" election. This sort of personalization comes naturally to a leader whose first public reaction to the death of a Florida teenager was, "If I had a son, he'd look like Trayvon."

If the country (and the world) survive this Odious Occupier of the Oval Office, history will have No Sentence for his presidency. He will leave behind only a trilogy of personal pronouns, I - Me - Mine.

These, his most memorable words do not - and cannot - be built into a sentence and yet, their significance is still quite stunning.

I went to the US Consulate this week to take care of certain family business. It was a thoroughly unpleasant experience.

[....]

The State Department opened its new consulate in Jerusalem in October 2010. It is located in the Jewish neighborhood of Arnona.

It was built on the plot that Israel allocated for the US Embassy after Congress passed Jerusalem Embassy Act in 1995 requiring the US government to move its embassy to Jerusalem. I read that construction began in 2004.

I haven't been able to find out whether when construction began it was to build the embassy or a new consulate so I don't know yet whether the Bush administration thought it was building an embassy that the Obama administration turned into a consulate or if the Bush administration thought it was building a consulate that the Obama administration completed.

Whatever the case, the fact that the building that was supposed to be an expression of US recognition of Israel's capital in Jerusalem is being used as the consulate is an unvarnished act of aggression against Israel and Congress.

If I am not mistaken, the US Consulate General in Jerusalem is the only US consulate in the world that is not subordinate to the embassy in the country where it is located. When it was located in a hostile Arab neighborhood in eastern Jerusalem, the fact that it was not subordinate to the US Embassy in Tel Aviv was upsetting. But it was also easily justified in light of US policy of not recognizing Israeli sovereignty in eastern, southern and northern Jerusalem.

But Arnona is in western Jerusalem. It is a Jewish neighborhood that even the most radical Israeli leftists don't envision transferring to the Palestinians in any peace deal. Putting the consulate in Arnona - and on the site reserved for the embassy no less - is the clearest expression of American rejection of all Israeli sovereign rights to Jerusalem imaginable....

Mega Millions mania will reach its pinnacle today as the largest jackpot in the history of lotteries is up for grabs. The $540 million jackpot eclipses the previous high for Mega Millions, which was $390 million.